#hanami is the world's grumpiest store-brand jedi

[blackestnight]

alternative ask because i didn't see you already answered for 'armor' - Gravity. cuddling up to a loved one when they are too tired to see straight.

by fantastically happy chance, i already got this prompt twice, and aymeric and hanami each got a turn at being deliriously tired, so now they both get to be wiped. also stole the prompt “recovery” from @seaswolchallenge.

this is set in an extremely self-indulgent space opera au based on the starfinder tabletop game, which (in theory, if i did my job right) requires no actual knowledge of starfinder, but just for clarity: magic and science happily coexist, fantasy races abound, and the rule of cool is the abiding law. also, some races have natural psychic abilities to varying degrees.

enjoy two idiots both failing their fortitude saves. and their wisdom saves. every save, basically.

The Waking Sands Security Services & Augmentation Center

Cuvacara, Vimal, Ring of Nations

Verces

Hanami stared at the bed for a long moment, contemplating its betrayal, and then heaved a sigh. 

The staff quarters at the Waking Sands employed a sort of mechanized loft system, allowing the full-size beds to be lifted up during the day and leaving room for small work surfaces to be unfolded from the wall underneath. It was a decent solution for the lack of habitable space in the city, and infinitely better than the shoebox she’d lived in while she was still based with the Legion, but it posed two distinct problems at this exact moment. The first problem was that the beds had sensors that locked the lift rails in place if the desks were unfolded, and whoever had been responsible for dropping off her and Aymeric’s mended gear had piled it all on the table, and if she tried to bend over to move the pile enough to fold up the desk she was going to black out, and if she broke the lift again G’raha was going to polymorph her into a toaster oven.

(She maintained that it hadn’t been her fault, at least the first time; Vercite beds weren’t built to handle dragonkin, not even miniaturized hybrid species like her, never mind her weight and that of a full-grown elf. He was probably just looking for an excuse to embarrass her after she’d knocked him off his motorcycle the last time they’d raced.)

The bed was at eye level. She could climb up, even without a ladder, even when she was this off-kilter. The second problem was that Aymeric most definitely could not, especially not with his leg in a full cast and bombed to the ears on Y’shtola’s new painkillers as he was—the same painkillers that were making her dizzy secondhand, like a psychic contact high, and if she tried to lift him and landed either one of them back in the med bay Krile was going to polymorph her into a gecko.

At her side, Aymeric shifted where he was propped on her shoulder. To his credit, he was doing a decent job of staying upright, especially considering how unwieldy the cast was and how much the sensation in his legs had been deadened (less for the pain, Y’shtola had promised, and more for the unbearable itching sensation that the nanites caused as they fused the bone back together). “‘M only a half-elf, love,” he reminded her, pressing the words into her hair as he began to list sideways.

Hanami jostled her shoulder to get a better grip on his waist. “Which is stupid,” she hissed, running a comforting thumb over his hip when she caught an echo of nausea. “You are not half elf just because an ancestor was part human. That is not how math works. Sovyrian heritage law is absurd. It does not make you any less tall either.” She pondered the bed for another second, wondering if the dizziness would ease up if she got Aymeric into a chair, and promptly backtracked when she realized she hadn’t originally been speaking aloud. “And if you cannot keep me from getting high off of your meds, you can at least stop eavesdropping.”

“Not on purpose,” he promised, and she felt a (muddied) wave of genuine remorse. “You’re...very loud. I lack your experience with this sort of thing.”

...which would be fair, if Hanami were awake enough to feel fair. Elves (and half-elves, since apparently being drugged turned Aymeric into a gods-damned pedant, and she knew he heard that when he snickered into her hair) weren’t natural psychics; she did have experience with partner bonds even if she hadn’t had one in decades. And he had gotten better about quieting his end of their bond-link. She probably would have had an easier time filtering him out if she’d slept in the last day.

She felt his sudden spike of worry through the fog of medication, and he leaned closer to press a sloppy kiss to her cheek, lacking his usual coordination but no less sweet. At least she didn’t have to explain why she hadn’t slept; she’d complained, verbally and mentally, very loudly, about lawyers demanding even more redundant repetitions of testimony than the military officers in the Legion, but she’d been happy to snap and snarl and kick up a fuss if it got the Skylift R&D idiots who had almost killed them kicked offworld. She didn’t have Aymeric’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of Pact Worlds corporate law, but she had plenty of practice with making stuffy, shady legal-types piss themselves.

“My darling terror,” he crooned, interrupting her reflection. “You are so kind to me.” 

“Only because you are walking wounded,” she said, and nudged his forehead with her own. Her own irritation settled at the touch, and she skimmed her palm up his spine. She wasn’t sure if the surge of affection that followed was her own or Aymeric’s. Probably both. The fuzzy vision of the two of them curled up on the floor was definitely his, but she had to admit it was tempting to just forget the stupid bed. She’d certainly slept in worse places. The feeling of his weight and his arms was a better sedative than any chemical Y’shtola could shoot her up with, like coming home and finally feeling grounded after a long stint space-side. Comforting, familiar gravity.

...huh, she thought, and Aymeric hummed a questioning noise into her scales. “What?” he yawned, though from the tone of his voice and the humor she felt filtering from him she knew he meant What are you doing now?

“Hold on tight to me,” Hanami said, and pulled him even closer with the arm around his waist; with her other hand she grasped the side rail of the bed, sliding her palm under it and looping her fingers over as though she was readying to do a pull-up. He shuffled to face her as best he could, the long line of his cast hard against her thigh, and hooked his free hand into the back of her jacket’s collar. Such immediate, unquestioning trust in her, she had to stop for a second and press her own harsh kiss to his forehead.

Then she reached for the tug of gravity at the edge of her awareness, the one that pulled her toward the planet’s heart, the one that kept her bearings straight even in the depths of space, and forced it off.

Her feet drifted off the floor first, ready as she was for the sudden weightlessness. She took the chance to brace Aymeric’s injured leg between her calves while he clung even tighter to her, hooking his uninjured leg around the back of her knee. She tensed the muscles of her abdomen and tugged on the bed rail, using it as leverage to pull them both toward the ceiling. With a grunt and a twist of her shoulder, she flipped them both over the rail, and from there it was easy to press Aymeric safely down onto the mattress and shove herself to the side before she allowed gravity to reassert itself.

She did a rather embarrassing faceplant into her pillow, accompanied by a crashing sound from below—the packages on the desk, she realized, dimly, through the buzzing in her head. At least nothing was breakable, and Aymeric kept the batteries for his plasma rifle locked in a safe. Accidentally blasting a hole through the ceiling would have been overkill after the week she’d had.

She groaned, muffled by the pillow, and snapped her fingers at the sensors to shut the lights off. Even without the fluorescents, the pounding behind her eyes continued. Maybe she shouldn’t have done the anti-gravity stunt when she was already worn out. At her side, Aymeric caught her hand and pulled it free of its grip on the blankets, pressing a soothing kiss into her palm.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice rumbling and steady in the dark. “You did so well, love, you were brilliant. You deserve some rest.”

His voice was low and beguiling, and there was a deliberate pressure on her mind like a firm, comforting hand—not his most subtle work. “You do not have to use any mind tricks,” she told him as best she could around her yawn. “‘M going to sleep.”

“I know,” he said, and underneath she heard his silent protest of not a mind trick—whatever, she was too tired to have that debate again. She felt him shuffle sideways toward her, slow and ungainly and so, so loving, it felt almost like a physical warmth washing over her. “But if I can help you rest, all the better.”

“Mm,” she said, and shifted just enough to press against his shoulder, careful not to jostle his leg. Exhausted, fog-headed, comfortable and warm...she sighed and squeezed his hand in her own. “You help just by being here.”

She actually wasn’t sure if she’d said the last part out loud. Not like it mattered. He made a low, happy noise, relaxing into the haze of painkillers, and even if he didn’t speak it in words she heard his echoed I love you loud and clear.